A question that ARAS Connections continues to wrestle with concerns giving attention to current social/political conflicts in the context of a Jungian or post-Jungian perspective. Some may believe that the primary focus of ARAS should be on issues related to Jung’s work on individuation and its connection to archetypal, symbolic themes. Those who hold this position may legitimately ask, “Are we straying from Jung’s focus on the symbolic life in the individual by concerning ourselves with the collective psyche and the horrors that are now gripping the world in the form of war, climate change, pandemics, and political polarization?” What we do know is that Jung was not immune from or oblivious to the role of the collective unconscious in shaping the collective psyche and vice versa. He personally experienced such phenomena in his terrifying visions of blood enveloping much of Europe after his break with Freud in 1913. He feared that he was suffering a personal psychosis until the outbreak of World War 1 convinced him that he was suffering the “infection” of the times. And again, in his warnings about the rise of Nazism in Wotan in 1936 Jung was acutely aware of the dangers of collective possession by archetypal forces in the German psyche. As Jungians, should we turn our back on what is happening in so many different parts of the world in the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism or in the struggle between “haves” and “have nots” or so many other increasingly polarizing forces that threaten to engulf us? Should we at ARAS Connections, confine ourselves to the study of symbolic images from the history of cultures only as they appear in the individual psyche? Clearly, my personal answer is a resounding “no”—but I do understand that some may feel that we are straying from our mission by publishing articles on the conflicts in Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia.

ARAS Connections has been a proud supporter of the With Ukrainian Jungians series by posting all of their fine webinar presentations on our website. In this issue, we offer one of the recent #WUJ presentations in which Daria Kunchenko of Ukraine, Pi-Chen Hsu of Taiwan, and I, Tom Singer of the United States each present interconnected reflections on how intensifying international conflicts and war impact the psyche of both groups and individuals.